Larks of Joy (Northcote)

Fo0die dined as a guest of Larks of Joy and as such, the rating does not give any consideration to customer service.

Parking on the street is 1P up to 12:30pm on a Saturday with tram route 86 running along the street for anyone wanting to public transport to the venue.

We arrived at 11:45am and the venue was relatively calm until about 1pm when it started to get busy with the lunch time crowd.

The name larks of joy reflects the venues aim to provide great food and coffee to leave diners feeling “happy as a lark”. And having just returned from our trip from Japan, we were definitely looking forward to a Melbourne brunch and if we left feeling as “happy as a lark”, even better.

Interior

Walking through the doors, the venue has bench style seating with stools right at the entrance with a marble communal table to the left. The coffee counter and kitchen are neatly on the right hand side of the venue with tables on the left hand side. Some outdoor seating is also available at the front of the venue.

The decor is a mix of white, light timber and draping greenery; creating a very comforting and aesthetic environment to wind down with a bit of coffee and food.

Food/Drinks

Serving an all day menu, Larks of Joy have all the classics such as baked eggs, fritters, chilli scramble, smashed avo, toast, bircher, eggs your way and pancakes but also the dishes that have been very popular at cafes such as poke bowl, burgers, falafel and panna cotta.

With so many choices, we managed to settle on the beef cheeks which is one of their popular dishes and the baked eggs. The beef cheeks dish looked a bit like the classic eggs benedict but on a waffle instead of an English muffin. The beef cheeks was so tender and kept light with the tangy bearnaise, pickled cabbage and apple slaw which also added a bit of sweetness to the dish.

The baked eggs dish has a very strong tomato base flavour (which reminded us of tomato paste) and we loved how this was served with flatbread instead of the usual toast. The addition of olives gave the baked eggs dish a nice added flavour (although Mr J may say otherwise as he is not a fan of olives).

To finish off, we feasted our eyes on this beautifully presented red velvet pancake. Layered with white chocolate on top, it gave the pancakes a bit of extra sweetness. Overall a well balanced dish without any particular flavour overpowering each other.